


Ocean Eyes

by weknowmajorTomsajunkie



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: M/M, North Dakota, Sad mac, Songfic, between s12 and 13
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:55:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25068760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weknowmajorTomsajunkie/pseuds/weknowmajorTomsajunkie
Summary: Mac thinks about his relationship with Dennis and the idea of home.
Relationships: Mac McDonald/Dennis Reynolds
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Ocean Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> No fair  
> You really know how to make me cry  
> When you give me those ocean eyes  
> I'm scared  
> I've never fallen from quite this high  
> Falling into your ocean eyes  
> Those ocean eyes

Mac hadn’t gone into work today. Come to think of it, he hadn’t been at the bar for over a week.   
He only left the apartment to go to the gym, and he usually needed to hype himself up for at least a couple of hours before he actually did go. 

Not so much go as drag. He dragged himself to the gym. Dragged himself back home. Drank himself into oblivion every night and continued the cycle. 

He loathed being in the apartment just as much as he hated being at Paddy’s, but staying alone at home was definitely the lesser of two evils. Not that he could call the apartment that. Not since Dennis left, anyway. 

Mac never considered himself a homely person. Growing up, “home” was just a place he tried to avoid as much as possible. His parents didn’t care if he was or wasn’t there, so he looked for places that did care. He went to church, he hung out with Charlie and later Dennis and Dee. 

He wanted to feel desired. Needed it, if he was completely honest with himself. He made a fool of himself, took no offence and forgot his dignity. All for the sake of a some praise. He learned that suffering through verbal and emotional abuse was totally worth it if there was a (metaphorical) pat on the back at the end of it. 

Dennis was the first person that got Mac in that way. He had Mac figured out before the end of senior year and   
knew what buttons he needed to push in order to make Mac comply. Not that they particularly enjoyed doing this. In the early years of their friendship, every interaction felt like a battle. Hell, they were two stubborn kids that didn’t want to admit that they were interested and actually enjoyed the little situation they had going on.   
Once they moved in together they agreed to an unspoken armistice. Mac would adore and please Dennis, who would give Mac the Safe Feeling he yearned for in return. 

As time went on, their relationship started to resemble a carefully choreographed dance, a delicate ecosystem that could collapse if either of them overstepped their boundaries. 

So they began to test each others limits. Pretending to be partners in real estate and life for a scheme. Sharing a spot on the floor at Dee because they had to. Jerking off together because of lack of privacy. 

All excuses, Mac now realized. Their little pretend world had become so out of control, so complex, that it collapsed into itself. 

Maybe it was the RPG, maybe Dennis felt that it got too real too fast (it wasn’t, Mac noted, they were playing this game for 15 fucking years). They worked so long to get to where they were, to get to a point were both of them were ready to admit that it wasn’t normal for two “friends” in their forties to need each other this badly. Maybe that was the last straw, the one boundary Dennis wasn’t ready to cross. 

Now, Mac thought as he lay face down on the couch, their delicate ecosystem was as annihilated as Dennis’ Range Rover.

He only started to grasp the concept of home when he moved in with Dennis. Dennis cared how their place looked, cared if there was food in the fridge, cared about Mac. It’s as if he had some instinct for domesticity that Mac could only try to emulate (he never managed to. Most of his attempts ended in catastrophe and chaos). 

After meeting Frank and Barbara, Mac realized that Dennis’ example of domestic bliss was as messed up as his. And yet their house, their apartment, felt like a home. Even living with Dee felt cozy. It’s not like they weren’t both annoyed at this new living situation and she wasn’t disrupting the carefully crafted balance between them (she was definitely an invading species in their ecosystem - a bird, most likely). But being so close to each other, sharing each others space even more, somehow made them grow closer together. Made them more protective of each other.

Mac knew that the suburbs were a mistake. He took Dennis’ trust in him and fucked it up. He tried to build a home, he really did, but he just couldn’t. Maybe it had something to to with the fact that the pillar of Mac’s homeliness was spending two hours on the freeway each day, commuting to and from work. That the entire foundation of what “home” meant was sleeping in the Range Rover and eating at Applebee’s. 

Maybe his inability to make a house a home didn't just boil down to lack of proper education. Perhaps it was because his concept of home wasn’t tied to a place, but a person. 

Although Mac had never been in North Dakota (not physically), he felt like a huge chunk of his soul was stuck there. Dennis just took a part of Mac and relocated it to middle-of-buttfuck-nowhere North Dakota. Dennis probably wasn’t even aware on the havoc he wreaked on Mac. Being a father and building a home for his family. 

Associating home with a person didn’t only mean that home was where the person went, but also that the person themselves became home. Their body was a temple of which every inch, every crevice was to be marvelled at and revered. Dennis was Mac’s safe space. Where he could lose himself but always count on being found. 

Safest of all he felt in Dennis’ eyes. They were the kind of eyes in which he could forget to swim and be happy to drown. Eyes that gave so little away, yet told the whole story in one glance. Each time Dennis looked at him felt familiar and brand new at the same time. For a person that claimed to be detached from emotions, Dennis’ eyes held a surprising amount of tenderness and sincerity. Mac remembered how he felt reassured every time Dennis and he held eye contact for a couple of seconds. 

As Mac thought how unfair it was that his home moved 1700 miles away without his consent, he started to notice the tears streaming down his face. He hadn’t cried since Dennis left and now that the dam had broken, he couldn’t stop. 

Even from across the country Dennis still played him like a fiddle, Mac noted. “Fuck that guy”, he said without meaning it as he tried to brush his tears away and got up to get another beer.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, another songfic! (can I write anything else at this point?)
> 
> I did have to google "Glenn Howerton eyes" for this.
> 
> Ocean eyes just ~felt~ like a macden song. 
> 
> (sorry for any mistakes/spelling inconsistencies - English isn't my first language lol)


End file.
